How did hiring someone to press a pig image during Chinese New Year become a top trend?

Xu An's fingers gripped the edge of the envelope.

Twenty-three years.

If the old street hadn't been facing demolition, and if he hadn't sold his junk for three yuan and fifty cents at the scrap yard and walked this way...

These are the last images captured by the survey team.

It will be burned as garbage along with this photo studio.

This is destiny.

Without further hesitation, he pulled out the rusty pair of pliers that Lao Han had given him from the side pocket of his canvas bag.

I gently pried open the seal on the envelope with the tip of the pliers.

The screen in the live stream seemed to freeze at that moment.

No one posted any comments.

Everyone was staring at the envelope in Xu An's hand.

The envelope contained a stack of printed color photographs.

There was also a small roll of film rolled into a cylindrical shape.

Xu An pulled out the photo.

The first photo.

It is a distant view of a valley.

In the lower left corner of the photo, there is a man's back view wearing a windbreaker.

The man was spraying red paint onto a stone wall.

Xu An was very familiar with that mark.

A cross is drawn inside a circle.

The second photo.

It's a group photo of several people.

The background is the entrance of this Chunfeng Photo Studio.

Five people stood in a row.

The man in the middle had a neat buzz cut, a resolute face, and a bright smile.

He was wearing a green military overcoat and holding a geological hammer in his hand.

Xu An shifted her gaze away from the man.

It landed on the woman standing on the far right.

The woman was very thin and was wearing a white polyester shirt.

Her hair was casually tied back with a hair tie.

Her left hand was on the shoulder of the person next to her.

On the wrist.

It was tied with a bright red string.

This is Zhou Xiaotang.

Zhou Xiaotang in her youth.

Xu An's hands did not tremble.

But he stared at that face for a long time.

This was the first time in his life that he had seen his mother's appearance when she was young so clearly.

Without the passage of time, without the resolute determination that left behind those heavy words.

He was just a gentle-smiling exploration team member.

The live stream was instantly flooded with tearful expressions.

"This is An Shen's mother."

"The red rope has finally been revealed in its true form."

"The family's footprints are now complete in this photo studio that is about to be demolished."

"Thank God these photos survived."

Xu An flipped the group photo over.

There was a line of text written in pen on the back of the photograph.

The bend of the horizontal stroke with a hook has a very subtle leftward pause.

It's the handwriting that belongs to GS-01.

"A group photo taken in Fengping Town in 1998, with everyone present."

Xu An was stunned for a moment.

1998.

This shows that they left their mark here more than once.

These washed film rolls document their earlier exploration routines.

He continued flipping through the pages.

The third and fourth photos are records of various geological features and landforms.

Keep flipping to the last page.

This is a slightly underexposed photo.

The background of the photo is not mountains or forests.

It's not a highway.

It is not an exploration site.

Instead, it was a dilapidated little courtyard.

The courtyard was filled with a tree full of white flowers.

Petals fell to the ground.

In the very center of the photo, several words are carved on a thick tree trunk.

The writing was too illegible in the dim light.

But Xu An recognized the tree.

That's a crabapple tree.

There's an identical one back in my hometown.

Grandpa just mentioned that on the phone this morning.

The crabapple tree is in bloom.

An unsigned letter read that the crabapple tree was in bloom.

The negatives, which were not taken away 23 years ago, captured a strange courtyard filled with blooming crabapple trees.

There was a terrifying yet subtle echo between the two.

Xu An flipped the photo over.

The year is not written on the back.

Only one place name was written.

"No. 42 Qingyun Lane, Mangshi City".

The old man walked over with a water cup in his hand.

He glanced at the photo in Xu An's hand.

"Judging from your expression, you've found someone you know?"

Xu An nodded.

I carefully gathered the photos and put them back in the envelope.

Then he took out the three yuan and fifty cents he had just earned from selling scrap metal, along with the only fifty-yuan bill he had on him.

They were pressed together on the glass countertop.

"Uncle, I'll take these photos with me."

"It can be considered a return to its rightful owner."

The old man didn't look at the money.

Instead, he stared at Xu An for a while.

Then he shook his head.

"Take the photos, and take your money back."

"I already said it's free to claim."

"But I do have a vague recollection of these people."

The old man's eyes narrowed slightly.

It seems like he's recalling something from a long time ago.

"It was probably around 2016."

"A man came to my shop."

Xu An suddenly raised his head.

"A man? What does he look like?"

"He didn't talk much and was wearing a faded black jacket."

"He didn't come to pick up photos; he came to buy Kodak film rolls."

He gave me a hundred yuan and told me to keep the change.

"Then I stood at the shop entrance and looked at the sign outside for a while."

The old man picked up his water glass, took a sip, and moistened his throat.

"I only noticed when he took out his money as he left."

"That man's right hand."

"Two fingers are missing."

The screen in the live stream seemed to freeze at that moment.

"Oh my god, two fingers are missing."

"Is this a new clue or a new character?"

"Wait, are there any people with severed fingers in the GS investigation team?"

"Isn't 2016 the same year that the person renewing the post office locker subscription changed?"

The veins on the back of Xu An's hand, which was gripping the envelope, bulged.

It appeared in 2016.

Buy rubber rolls.

A severed finger.

He had never heard of this characteristic before in any files or in the memories of the elderly.

This is someone who remains completely detached from the public eye.

Xu An took a deep breath.

The envelope was carefully placed into the innermost compartment of the canvas bag.

Zip up the zipper.

He bowed deeply to the old man.

"Thank you for guarding us for twenty-three years."

The old man waved his hand, picked up the rag, and continued wiping away the dust.

"Alright, let's go."

"Seven days later, the store will be completely sold out."

When Xu An walked out of the photo studio.

It was already getting dark outside.

The wind rustled through the hanging photos on the old street.

His bag now contained a stack of photos from twenty-three years ago.

It is less than 20 kilometers away from the city center of Mangshi.

The countdown for that post office locker also had only seven days left.

He took out his phone.

Open the map software.

I entered the address I saw on the back of the photo earlier into the search bar.

No. 42 Qingyun Lane.

A red location icon pops up on the screen.

It is located in the heart of the old city of Mangshi.

It's less than two blocks from the post office.

Xu An put away his phone.

Tighten the straps of the canvas bag over your shoulder.

I strode towards the end of that nearly vanished old street.

Night falls.

And in the shadows of the street corner not far from him.

An elderly man wearing a sanitation worker's vest slowly pushed a garbage cart past.

The old man's right hand rested on the metal handle of the cart.

The streetlight illuminated the hand.

The position of the index and middle fingers.

Empty.

Xu An woke up at 4:30 a.m. in an abandoned bus stop at the end of Fengping Old Street.

The platform's roof was made of sheet metal, and after it got wet with dew at night, water dripped down, making a pattering sound all night long on the waterproof flap of his canvas bag.

But he slept alright. Over the past three months, he'd made do in various places, sleeping on rocks, under bridges, and inside culverts. A metal platform was already considered a luxury.

When he sat up, his neck cracked, and his left shoulder, where the canvas bag strap had been digging into him all night, felt a little numb. He rubbed his shoulder, moved it around a bit, and then rearranged the bag and put it back on.

Before dawn, the eastern horizon was tinged with a grayish-blue light, and the temperature in the air had already begun to rise.

This is how it is in western Yunnan in June. The ground gets warm before the sun even rises, and the asphalt road surface radiates the heat it absorbed the day before in the darkness, making your shoes feel warm when you step on it.

He headed south.

As he walked out of the old street area, he glanced back at the alley that was about to disappear.

Yesterday evening, when he came out of the photo studio, he saw the right hand of the sanitation worker pushing the garbage cart in the shadows on the street corner.

The positions of the index and middle fingers are empty.

He didn't chase after them.

It's not that he didn't notice; it's that he's come to understand something along the way: some people don't show up because their time hasn't come yet, and if you try to catch up, you'll only disrupt their rhythm.

Just like that time at the Ludongshan weather station, the other party calmly left two hours before he arrived, leaving behind hot water, a map, and photos, but not him.

Go with the flow.

We will meet when the time is right.

There weren't many people in the live stream at midnight, only about seventy, mostly night owls with their days and nights reversed. Occasionally, one or two comments would pop up in the chat.

"An Shen got up so early."

"He's going berserk again. Today's target is Mangshi."

"The post office is less than 20 kilometers away. At An Shen's walking speed, he should be able to get there before this evening."

Xu An didn't reply to the comments. He propped his phone up on the shoulder strap of his canvas bag to fix the camera angle, then walked with his head down.

The provincial highway is very straight in this section, with large sugarcane fields and scattered mango orchards on both sides. As the sky gradually brightens, you can see a thin ribbon of white clouds hanging on the distant mountain ridge, as if someone has wrapped a scarf around the mountainside.

By 6:30, the sun had fully emerged.

The heat poured down like a tap being turned on, soaking Xu An's back within five minutes. Sweat dripped from the tips of his hair, down his nose, onto his chin, and then splattered onto the road. The asphalt absorbed the sweat the moment it hit the ground, leaving no trace.

He took out the water bottle and took two sips. The water in the bottle was no longer cold, and it had that slightly greasy, lukewarm smell that comes from a plastic bottle that has been exposed to the sun.

When he reached the seventh kilometer, he saw something by the roadside.

A thermos.

It was an old-fashioned stainless steel thermos, with a brightly polished exterior, a tightly screwed-on cap, and three words written on the bottle in red marker.

"Cold water, drink it."

The thermos was placed on a stone by the roadside, which was located under the shade of a mango tree. Next to it was an upside-down enamel cup, with the bottom facing up to prevent dust from settling in.

Xu An slowed down a beat as he walked over.

He glanced ahead.

About three or four hundred meters ahead, there was another tree by the roadside, and you could vaguely see the reflection of another thermos bottle under the tree.

Looking further ahead, there's more in the distance.

One after another, spaced about 300 meters apart, they formed a discontinuous line along the right side of the provincial highway.

The number of viewers in the live stream had just exceeded one hundred when someone with sharp eyes noticed.

"Why is there a row of thermos bottles by the roadside?"

"Who put this here? Was it free?"

"Anshen, are you thirsty? Try a sip; it says 'cold water' on it."